Tag: Italian

An opening shot of a man shooting a gun at what appears to be a body tied up in a canvas bag and a single line of dialog – “The boat can leave now, tell the crew” is the only clue Lucio Fulci provides you before the title of Zombie. Next we know, that boat is sailing aimlessly into the New York harbor, where some Coast Guard officers find what’s left of the crew – a lone decaying zombie – and it’s got a hankerin’ for some fresh flesh.

While this movie is known in the states as “Zombie”, the Italian title is Zombi 2 (the original “Zombi” is actually George Romero’s Dawn of the Dead – go figure). In this film, a mysterious boat floats into the New York Harbor. The harbor patrol believes the boat to abandoned, but there’s actually a zombie aboard who attacks the the patrolmen. This leads to an investigation to figure out where the boat and the zombie came from.

We’ll be taking a look at Zombi 2 and it’s sequels, of which there are 3, in the coming weeks so stay tuned for our reviews.

Often times when movies are touted as a cross between this movie and that movie they fall short of either. Today’s movie, Blastfighter, has been said to be a cross between First Blood: Rambo and Deliverance. It would be an understatement to say that even coming close to those movies is impossible. But at Internal Bleeding we don’t look for Oscar caliber performances, we grade on entertainment value. So a cross between 2 classic hicksploitation movies is right up our alley!

In the days of my youth, my sister and I would rent videos every weekend. Some of our favorites were action/adventure movies, and particularly those that existed in the realm of fantasy – like Red Sonja, Conan the Barbarian or Beastmaster. We always scoped out which ones looked the worst, and thanks to just about everything being released on VHS those days, there were a lot of movies to go around. One movie I never got to see was 1987’s The Barbarians, starring the ridiculously well built Paul Brothers (David Paul and Peter Paul), aka The Barbarian Brothers, where they play the titular (I always wanted to use that word… Titular…) Barbarians.